$1 TV DVDs, or How To Take My Money

I admit that I'm a hopeless TV junkie, and I always have been. Specifically, I've always liked cartoons, and superhero cartoons have always been my favorite. I was crazy about Wonder Friends growing up and I really loved the old Max Fleischer Superman cartoons of the 1930s-1940s. The neat thing is that a lot of these older TV shows are now entering the public domain, meaning that their copyright has expired and anybody who wants to can freely distribute them. Some enterprising people have quickly churned out DVDs of these old TV shows and have priced them at ridiculously low levels - usually $1 or cheaper. Unfortunately for my poor wallet, that's the perfect price point. $1 for 10 Max Fleischer Superman cartoons? Yes, please. $1 for 6 epsiodes of Mighty Mouse? Sold. Even older movies are now finding their way to the $1 rack. $1 for the original "Night of the Living Dead"? Here you go.

Here's what I've collected over the course of the past year. All of these were bought at either Wal-Mart, Walgreens, Target, or CVS:


The problem with these DVDs is that they're of varying quality in both production values (and quality of restoration/picture) and of packaging values. For example, the two DVDs that I bought from Target, Dragnet and Superman, are the best looking in terms of picture quality, but leave a lot to be desired in the packaging department:


Seriously. What the hell is that? They just used some cheap tack and taped it on the inside of a very flimsy cardboard box. How pray tell is one supposed to keep this DVD in their collection and store it? Though I guess for $1, they figure many will just watch it and toss it. From any $1 disc you buy, just be warned that the picture quality will probably suck (most of them do) and if you don't know the material, some of it is awful bland (they had a bland sense of humor in the 1930s), but hey, you get what you pay for.

In other news, I requested that Facebook merge my GT and FSU accounts. Normally, they delete one and merge its information with the other. In my case, they deleted both. That's right, I'm now off Facebook. No big loss. Not with Facebook's ties to the CIA as a data mining operation. Sure, that might sound a bit "tinfoil hat-like", but I never really got the purpose of the site anyway. I still for the life of me can't understand MySpace. No, I still don't want to join. Stop asking.

I shaved my head on July 4th. If you haven't seen it, you'd be amused.

Pirates of the Caribbean 2 was a good setup for PotC3. I've seen it twice now, and while I did like the humor, it did seem a bit long. I did enjoy it though. It was better than the also-good-but-too-long Superman Returns.